White Mare's Daughter (69 page)

There was still a little light in the sky. He went hunting
something—he did not overmuch care what.

Not all the women were gone from this town in which they had
camped, nor was any of those unwilling. They lingered, it seemed, out of
curiosity and in despite of fear. Having done nothing to harm the horsemen,
they found themselves unharmed in return.

One was tending a thing that Agni had learned to call an
oven, baking bread that lured him with its fragrance. She was plump and
dark-eyed as nearly all the women were here, but prettier than most. She smiled
at the sight of him, with a look that he could not mistake. No enmity here, and
no revulsion either.

She offered him a loaf still warm from the baking. He bit
into it.

She watched him eat, still smiling. He was well and modestly
dressed, but under those eyes he might have been naked.

Men had looked at women so, it was said, before Earth Mother
taught the women to veil themselves and live sequestered in tents. No wonder
the goddess had so protected them. Women were weak, and men excessively strong.
A man who wanted a woman would take her and care nothing for her family or her
honor—as Agni was said to have done to the woman of the Red Deer.

And here was a woman regarding him just so, as if she would
leap on him and have her way with him, and never ask his leave.

It should have left him cold, or made him angry. Tonight, in
the mood that possessed him, he was inclined to oblige her. These women took
men of their own choosing, and had their will of them, too.

He had not given himself up to one of them, not yet. Not
entirely. Tonight maybe he would do it.

Rudira, when he thought of her at all, now seemed a weak
shadow of the women here. All her wantonness had been mostly boredom and the
petulance of a spoiled child. If he had not been her husband’s brother, and the
one Yama hated the most at that, Agni wondered if she would even have noticed
him.

That was a hard thought. He had never dared think it before.
But with those wanton black eyes burning on him, the memory of wanton grey eyes
was dim and pale.

He ate the last of the loaf. She leaned toward him, reached
out a hand, brushed the crumbs from his beard.

He held still. Her smile changed. She stroked fingers through
his hair as they all loved to do here, captivated by the color and the feel of
it: so much softer than her own, and so straight.

She took him by the hand. He let out a breath.

She tugged. He followed her as if he had been one of the
meek men of this country. It was almost alarmingly easy; as if his will lost
itself somewhere, and had no life or presence apart from hers.

oOo

She led him inside the house that stood nearest the
bread-oven. It was a small house, bare and rather mean, but it was clean.

By the light of a lamp she undressed him, cooing over him.
She loved his shoulders, his breast with its sparse red hairs, his skin that
was milk-white where the sun seldom touched it. She particularly loved his
manly parts, cradled them in her hands as if they had been rare stones, and
stroked his tall shaft till he gasped aloud. Still smiling that perpetual
smile, she mounted and rode him as capably as any horseman.

He could lie still in shock, or he could try to give her
such pleasure as she would take. It was all the same to her. She used him as a
man might use a woman, as a thing for her pleasure; with no regard for his
pride. She made of him a plaything, dandled him and petted him, and when he had
brought her to the summit, after she had wrung every drop of pleasure from it,
she rose and smoothed her gown over her hips and her heavy thighs, and left him
without a glance.

She did not come back. He had not honestly expected her to,
but it was a disappointment nonetheless. Even here, he had grown accustomed to women
looking on him with liking, wanting to linger, professing themselves well
pleased with what he had to give.

He dragged himself up after a while and went back toward his
tent; but he passed it, went to the stream that flowed along the edge of the
field. He washed himself in it over and over, scrubbing till his skin was raw.
Even then he did not feel clean.

oOo

He slept a little, maybe. He was up before dawn, rousing
his people, driving them to break camp and ride before the sun was well up.

Mika had his own horse now, more or less: one of the
remounts, an ugly-headed, thick-furred creature of indeterminate color. He
called it a name in his own tongue that, he said, meant Fierce Lion, and clung
to its back with more determination than skill.

Lion was a very small horse and terribly short-legged, but
he had a decent turn of speed. He could keep pace with Mitani for a while, as
he did this morning.

Mika had never yet failed to be bright-eyed and wide awake,
even at ungodly hours. He met Agni’s bleared scowl with wide eyes and
irrepressible grin.

Agni looked him straight in the eye and said, “Tell me
you’re not spying for the Mothers of this country.”

Mika barely blinked. “What is spying?” he asked.

“Watching,” Agni said. “Listening. Sending word to the enemy
of all one sees, so that the enemy can destroy the people whom the spy calls
friend.”

“That is a horrible thing to do,” Mika said. “Who would do
such a thing?”

“A spy,” Agni said.

“Then I am not one,” said Mika. “I watch and I listen,
because I can hardly help it, but I’d never talk to an enemy. What would I do
that for? It would hurt you.”

“War is about hurting people,” Agni said.

“Yes,” said Mika, unwontedly somber. “I don’t like war.”

“Your people are all strange,” Agni muttered.

Mika’s ears were sharp. He said, “You don’t like it, either.
Everybody’s dreams said you’d come in a storm of fire. You haven’t brought much
fire at all.”

“It’s wasteful,” Agni said. “One burns, slays, sheds blood,
not for pleasure, but to gain what’s necessary. Then one stops.”

“Some of your men like the killing,” Mika said.

“There’s glory in it,” said Agni.

“They like it,” Mika said. “The way you like it when a woman
chooses you.”

“I choose a woman,” Agni said a little more fiercely than he
intended.

Mika graciously and visibly did not contradict him. “They
like it that way. It makes their rods stiff.”

“What do you know of that, puppy?” Agni asked him.

Mika shrugged elaborately. “Maybe I’m not all that young.”

“No: maybe you’re younger.”

Mika made a rude noise, kicked his horse into a scrambling
gallop, and gave Agni a taste of his dust.

Agni spat it out and laughed. “That’s no spy,” he said.

Patir, who had been riding behind them the whole time, came
up beside Agni and watched the boy on his shaggy rug of a horse, racing their own
shadow down the long open road. “He may not know he is,” he said.

Agni shot him a glance. “Don’t tell me you believe that.”

“Maybe I don’t,” Patir said. “But think of it a little
differently. This child is an innocent. He’d see no harm in riding to a city
ahead of us and telling its Mother everything we intend to do to it. He’d never
understand how that might harm us—and he’d be sure the Mother wanted to know.”

“We’ll tell him not to tell anyone,” Agni said. “He’s
honorable in his way. He’ll keep his word.”

“I don’t doubt it,” said Patir.

oOo

They rode on for a while. In back of them, people were
singing: a song of warriors on the march, advancing from victory to victory.
Agni joined in the chorus till it trailed off in favor of an uproarious
drinking song.

Then as if there had been no interruption, Patir said,
“Tillu means well.” Agni nodded. “He’s a good man. I trust him. But he’s seeing
betrayal where there is none.”

“He’s fond of you,” said Patir. “He frets maybe more than he
ought. All of us do.”

Agni could hardly contest that. “All of you? Westerners
too?”

“More of them than you’d think.” Patir slapped at a fly on
his horse’s neck. “Do you think this great city, this Three Birds, will fight
us? Or will it lie down and open its legs?”

“I hope it does neither,” said Agni.

“Then what?”

“I should like,” said Agni, “to find my sister there and
ruling it, holding it for me.”

Patir snorted, but softly. “What makes you think she’d do
such a thing?”

Agni shrugged. “It’s a pretty dream. More likely she’d
fortify it and hold it against me.”

“Or stand aside and let what will happen, happen.”

“Probably,” Agni said. “The Mare’s servants have done it for
time out of mind. They were like these people, you know, in the beginning.
Women ruled by women; men sent apart as young stallions are from the herd. They
fought to defend themselves, but never waged wars among their tribes. When the
eastern tribes came on them, they held where they could, but they judged it
wiser to bend like grass in the wind.”

“They’re all gone now,” Patir said, “except for your sister.
And you.”

Agni thought about that. He had never reckoned himself one
of the Mare’s people. She was a goddess for women. And yet, after all, her
blood was in his veins. He was twinborn with the last of her servants. Maybe he
was part of her, the last man of her people.

Strange thought to think, riding this path beaten by
countless feet, in this country that none of his kind had seen before now. And
maybe Sarama was waiting for him in the city with the odd name, or maybe she
had gone on to the edge of the world. He would know when he came there.

The horsemen were coming. Herdsmen in the easternmost
fields, wandering almost as far as the next city, had met with people fleeing
more urgently than before. The horsemen had taken Two Rivers. They rested
there, but the word was clear: they had only paused. They were coming to Three
Birds.

The defenses were as near to finished as they could be.
Sarama set scouts and sentries along the borders, sharp-eyed children and
herdsmen who were skilled in the use of bow and spear. The defenders in the
city were ready, waiting for the word that the horsemen had passed the borders.

Sarama rode the Mare for a while, and showed Danu how to
pare and trim the colt’s feet, which had overgrown themselves. He did not seem,
as others did, to find her calm unreasonable. But then Danu was a calm man
himself. As calm as a Mother, she would say when she wanted to make him blush
and sputter. He was never comfortable with the thought that he might be as
strong or as blessed as a woman.

The colt took lively exception to their meddling with his
feet. When they had won the day and sent him bouncing and snorting off with his
feet much improved, Tilia rose from the stone on which she had sat watching,
and walked with them toward the borders. The colt, belying his display of
temper, veered round and followed, and the Mare in his wake, calm but alert.

Sarama kept half an eye on her. She had been restless for a
day or two now, and irritable, snapping at the colt if he came too close. She
knew what was in the wind.

Tilia watched her, too, and with fair perception. “What’s
she smelling? All the stallions?”

“Hundreds of them,” Sarama agreed.

“And no mares? What foolishness. How can they make more
horses?”

“They don’t,” Sarama said. “On the steppe they raid for
more, or go home to the tribe and turn them out with the mares in season.”

“They won’t be raiding for more here,” Tilia said, “and
there’s only one Mare. That’s not very provident of them.”

“War is not about providence,” said Sarama.

“I can see that it isn’t.” Tilia strode through the tall
grass of the easternmost field, moving light and fast.

She was one of the better fighters, when she deigned to be.
She had a keen eye and a strong arm, and a fine aim with the bow. Sarama
thought she might be ruthless in a battle; might well bring herself to kill,
for her people’s sake.

Danu, Sarama was less sure of. He walked behind his sister,
lighter than she and quicker, with an effortless strength; but he lacked her
edge. He was a gentler creature.

Most men were, when they did not egg each other on. Women in
the tribes kept secret what was open knowledge here: that for sheer relentless
ferocity, there was nothing like a woman.

The border was quiet. Tilia went back to the city to see
that the fighters were ready and in their places. Sarama lingered for a little
while, looking out across peaceful country, rolling green hills, little rivers
flowing into the greater one that rolled past Three Birds, and a scattering of
towns and villages in the hollows and along the rivers. Hereafter, if war
stayed in this place, they would learn to build on hilltops and in places that
could be defended.

Maybe war would not stay. Maybe the tribesmen would be
driven out. Sarama had prayed for it in the temple this morning. She belonged
to the Lady now, and to the Lady’s country. She wished peace on it, and freedom
from war.

It might never have either, now that war had followed her
here. But she could pray. The Lady might see fit to listen.

oOo

The day stretched ahead of them. The sun reached its
zenith and hung there. When after an endless while it began to sink, a runner
came with the word they had been waiting for.

“Horsemen! They’ve passed the Mother-hill. There are
hundreds of them—they’re thick as locusts.”

Three Birds maintained its calm. Its fighters, ranked behind
the ditch that warded the eastern road, sat or lounged at ease. They had taken
a little bread and cheese, and drunk a wine made of fruits and flowers that was
supposed to make them strong. It made them a little giddy, but no one seemed
far gone in it.

They had heard the tales of the city that had fought. They
were better prepared by far, and they knew how to fight. They were still, and
wisely, on guard.